‘I don’t know, but he was very insistent, so I thought I ought to tell you,’ said Seaforth mildly, refusing to rise to Thorn’s challenge.
Thorn continued to stare at his subordinate for several moments and then looked away with a grimace. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked, making no effort to conceal his hostility.
‘No,’ Seaforth said genially. ‘That’s it.’ He went out with a smile, closing the door behind him. It was a lie about C, who was actually away overnight, but there was no one in the building except perhaps the twins who could gainsay Seaforth’s account of C having telephoned, and there was no reason for Thorn to cross-examine the twins when he had Seaforth’s file to keep him busy through the afternoon.
Now it was time to put the plan into action. Seaforth went quickly back upstairs to his office and called the Prime Minister’s office using the number Churchill’s secretary had given him when he visited the bunker. It was the same secretary who answered the phone. He knew who Seaforth was straight away and agreed to make sure that the briefing documents would go straight in front of the Prime Minister as soon as they arrived at 10 Downing Street. After that, of course, it would be up to the PM, but the secretary did say that Mr Churchill wasn’t expected anywhere until the evening so there would be time for a meeting if the PM wanted one, which would be at Number 10 unless a daylight bombing raid forced him into the bunker. Seaforth thought that unlikely. Recently, the Luftwaffe seemed to have largely given up on day raids, preferring to come in under the cloak of darkness.
Everything was fitting into place. Seaforth replaced the telephone receiver and picked it up again immediately to order a motorcycle courier, then went down with his package of documents to the front door, waiting to put it into the hands of the messenger himself.
‘Quick as you can,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot riding on it.’
The man nodded and roared away towards the park. Seaforth looked at his watch — it was just coming on to two o’clock. There was plenty of time left for everything to play out. It helped enormously that Churchill had given instructions for Seaforth’s intelligence reports to be sent to him direct, bypassing the Joint Intelligence Committee. This way, there was every chance that the summons to Downing Street would come before the end of the afternoon, and Seaforth was reasonably confident that Thorn would stay put until then.
And after that Seaforth would hold his destiny in his own hands, and he didn’t intend to make any more mistakes.
CHAPTER 11
Trave met Ava at the end of her street. She’d been out walking in the park and was on her way back, and when he told her what he knew, she wanted to come too. He tried to dissuade her, but she refused to tell him Seaforth’s address unless they went together, and in the end he had to give in.
‘This is about me as well as you,’ she said. ‘It’s about my father and Bertram and being used. You can understand that, can’t you?’ Trave could see that Ava’s opinion that Seaforth was responsible for her father’s murder and for framing Bertram appeared to have hardened into a conviction in the twenty-four hours he had been away.
‘Yes, I understand, but we need to get to Cadogan Square quickly,’ he said anxiously, looking at his watch. ‘Seaforth could go home any time. He’s got enough clout to set his own timetable.’
‘We can take Bertram’s car if you like,’ Ava volunteered. ‘He’s got it in a garage up on the High Street. It’s not exactly a Jaguar, but it should get us there quicker than the train. I’ll go and get the key.’
Trave waited impatiently while she ran upstairs to her flat, but she was back a moment later, and he had to walk fast to keep up with her. She seemed transformed from when he had seen her at the magistrates court the day before, almost as if she were a different person.
‘Do you drive?’ Trave asked as they turned the corner.
‘I wish,’ Ava said wistfully. ‘But my father and Bertram would never have stood for that. “A woman’s place is in the home” was like an article of faith for them. Oh, I know I shouldn’t talk about Bertram like he’s dead too,’ catching Trave’s surprised look at her use of the past tense. ‘But somehow I don’t feel like I’m married any more even if I am. I feel like’ — she stopped, groping for the right word — ‘like all that has happened in the last two weeks has changed me forever; that I can’t go back to who I was before, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I want to drive and have a job and be my own person. The war’s terrible. I know that. But it’s giving women like me a chance to live their own lives for the first time, and I feel like I have to be part of that. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Trave. There was something about Ava’s innocent, breathless enthusiasm that moved him. Liberated from the bonds that had kept her tethered to the ground, her spirit seemed to soar and she had a zest for life that reminded him of his wife, Vanessa. He wanted her to have her chance.
‘I feel like you do understand,’ she said, turning to look at Trave as they hurried down the road. ‘I think I’ve always felt that, ever since that night after my father died when I was so upset and you helped me to calm down so I could say what happened. Maybe it’s because you’re the only person who doesn’t want anything from me except to help.’
‘Maybe,’ said Trave, feeling complimented but also a little embarrassed.
‘Even with Alec I feel that he’s always hoping for something,’ she said, continuing her train of thought. ‘I went to see him yesterday at the hospital after I saw you, and I know it sounds awful but I was glad he was asleep. I wanted to see that he was all right, but I didn’t want to talk to him, to have to answer all his questions, and so I left before he woke up.’
Ava stopped, out of breath from the talking and the hurrying. They’d reached the garage, and several minutes later she and Trave were heading back towards the river in Bertram’s two-seater Austin 7, the motor car’s first outing since she and Bertram had driven to Scotland Yard on the day after her father’s funeral.
Trave drove fast, or as fast as the car’s small engine would allow, ignoring the speed limit and braking violently several times to avoid angry pedestrians who shook their fists at him as he went past. Ava laughed and Trave forgot the seriousness of their situation for a moment as they accelerated past the Chelsea Barracks and across Sloane Square.
But Ava’s mood changed abruptly when Trave turned off the King’s Road and the tall, red-brick, Dutch-style houses of Cadogan Square came into view, surrounding the well-tended communal garden. The square looked very different from when she had last seen it two evenings before. Now it was three o’clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing in the plane trees. A woman was walking her dog across the newly mown lawn, and at the far end two men in whites were playing tennis. But the peacefulness of the setting had no effect on Ava. Her experience with Seaforth was seared into her memory, and she felt a surge of anxiety as she recalled her narrow escape from his apartment.
The houses in the square had mostly been built at the same time midway through the reign of Queen Victoria, and many of them were indistinguishable from one another, so Trave was worried that Ava might not recognize the one where Seaforth lived. But she knew it straight away, and Trave parked the car out in front. The closer the better, he thought, if Seaforth came back and they needed to make a quick getaway.
He turned off the engine and turned to look at his companion. ‘Maybe you should stay down here,’ he said, looking down at her shaking hands.
‘No, we agreed to do this together. You can’t go back on it now I’ve got you here,’ she said angrily.
‘I’m not trying to. I was thinking of you, not me.’
‘Well, don’t,’ she said, refusing to be placated. ‘We should go now, before he gets back.’